If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you’ll have noticed me incessantly banging on about Siargao for quite some time now. If you don’t then this next post will be a bit of a treat for your eyes and will likely make you want to become one of the tourists I’m trying (probably not too sucessfully) to deter from visiting the island. I went to this tiny teardrop-shaped isleo back in April. It’s part of The Philippines archipelago and is not known to that many travellers let alone the general public. It is however a mecca to the surfing community, which is the reason I went there myself. I spent four incredible days surfing with the locals, eating fresh-caught tuna sashimi, doing yoga on the beach by sunset and exploring the island on a moped, staying at both backpacker accommodation run by an affable Brit and a five-star eco resort usually reserved for honeymooners which I was lucky enough to experience because of my work for Wallpaper* City Guides.
What struck me was how undeveloped the island was, even more so because I learned during my stay that the island would soon be facing it’s biggest challenge – keeping its USP after an airport extension on the island threatens to increase tourist footfall enormously in the next few years.
I wrote about the island through rose-tinted specs for the beautiful travel and fashion journal SUITCASEhere and about the more serious concerns facing some of the island’s local and expatriate communities for World Travel Guidehere. Take a look, and let me know if you think it is truly possible to retain the desert island appeal of such a beautiful and ultimately lucrative part of the world.
On a separate note I’ve gone and bought a URL for the blog in an attempt to force myself into posting more often. There’ll be a little bit of re-design over the next few days also. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it looks, and please check out the About page to find out what to expect from me from now on.
A bangkang, the traditional wooden canoe-boats used to fish and to transport surfers beyond the reefLocal children play at Doot beach
Trying to keep my balance whilst Joe relaxes on the sea pagado at Dedon Island resort
Rockpools at Magpupungko at Pilar on the east coast
As the motor-assisted long tail boat sped up the Kinabatangan river, I felt a stab of annoyance that my attention was drawn not to the serene, glassy river ahead or to some of Borneo’s most curios creatures; the Proboscis monkey, but instead to the gang of mosquitoes feasting away at my legs. My Dad had always laid claim to the fact that our family was particularly palatable for ‘mozzies’, and these guys had obviously got the memo. As a result of countless holidays spent despairing at my cheese grater limbs, I’d built up a tolerance to blood suckers and no longer feared them, or so I thought. After all, this was a trip to see monkeys, swinging freely in their natural habitat rather than behind the bars of zoos, not a time to be worrying about my ongoing mêlée with insects.
We arrived at the jungle camp accompanied by a thick morning mist that had descended over the river. Our bed for the night swung from the canopy overheard, a bamboo pyramid which looked like it would provide very little protection should an orang-utan decide to use it as a punch bag at night. Our group of 10 assembled on the camp’s central deck ready for the day’s instructions ahead of our first trek. Perched intently on the edge of my seat I tried simultaneously to listen to our guide Otto’s instructions, while fighting a losing battle with yet another family of mosquitoes.
Trying to ignore the crittersLife at the campThe club house
For the two days that we stayed at the camp our activities would consist of breakfast followed by a jungle trek. Lunch followed by a jungle trek and Dinner followed by, you guessed it, a jungle trek. We listened as Otto explained that among other things we could expect to see orang-utans, hornbill’s, crocodiles and…A dramatic pause as he delved into his sock…Leeches!
Up until that moment my preconception of this variety of blood sucker was just that. They were one more pesky little insect that would undoubtedly find my flesh enticing, but that I would pay little or no mind to. From snippets I’d seen on the Discovery Channel I’d surmised that leeches were no more to be feared than my old friend the mozzie. They were fat and lazy, overgorged slugs, swollen and slow, probably most likely to be found lounging on a rock. What greeted me on that damp 6am morning however was not fat or slow. This leech moved like a slinky toy; flipping its skinny tube body over itself, sucker to slimy sucker, apparently sniffing out its prey.
“Do not worry”, Otto chimed in a voice that despite his assailants advances, seemed inexplicably calm. “I will now communicate with the leeches…He says he tell his friends no bite Otto’s group.” I shuddered involuntarily. “Well at least we’re all in agreement then.”
weapon of choice against the mozzies
After a hearty breakfast of banana pancakes and miniature cups of gritty Malaysian coffee we began to follow our cheery guide into the dense, dewy undergrowth, occasionally stopping as a group of long tail macaques scarpered ahead of us, or we caught sight of a flash of mahogany fur in the canopy above us.
“This is our forest man”, pointed Otto, towards a patch in the jungle that had unnaturally parted ahead of us. I looked up to see that above me one of our closest animal relatives was gazing quizzically in our direction. “Here in the jungle ‘Orang’ means man and ‘utan’ the forest.”
For as long as I dared I stood to watch this arboreal creature as its face became animated in play, pursing its lips in a pout to rival Mrs Beckham’s, I understood how close to these creatures we really are.
After what seemed like hours my new friend took off again, startled by the rest of our group catching up, she disappeared into the green. We pressed on along the sludge and churned-up puddles of the jungle until we reached the edge of the island where another long tail boat waited eagerly for us to board. “Now we take to the river, for crocodile and lizard spotting”, Otto shouted over the din of the sputtering engine. It was at this point that I noticed that I may have missed a vital instruction from Otto, given no doubt while I was consumed with the bloody massacre taking place below my knees. What I had missed was clearly what we had clearly been instructed to wear; long socks, which they were now systematically yanking up over their knees, mirroring Otto’s own tugs and looking to me like some bizarre game of Simon Says, to which I wasn’t invited.
All of a sudden the game stopped and everyone reeled towards me as a woman half my size started shrieking and pointing at my feet. “Leeech!” She wailed over and over until I was forced to peel my eyes towards the impending doom that lay, once again, below knee height. Sure enough, on the front of my left Converse (Converse in the jungle, was I mad?), making its way defiantly towards my bare ankles was the very same terrifying site I’d been faced with acknowledging that morning. Hopping, burning, flicking are all but useless with this life stealer I can tell, so I crouch down beside the mocha river to accept my fate, blubbering to the crowd to “go, just go on without me”, and hold my breath waiting for the inevitable first pinch of clamped teeth. ‘This little sucker clearly didn’t heed Otto’s message either’ I thought as I slowly dissolved into a blackout.
Travel Guide Girl 